Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in West Reading, Pennsylvania. She is named after singer-songwriter James Taylor. Her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, is a former stockbroker for Merrill Lynch and her mother, Andrea Gardner Swift, is a former homemaker who previously worked as a mutual fund marketing executive. Taylor has a younger brother, actor Austin Swift, and is of Scottish, German, and Italian descent. Their maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, was an opera singer. Swift spent summers in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, until she was 14 years old, performing in a local coffee shop.
At age nine, Swift became interested in musical theater and performed in four Berks Youth Theatre Academy productions. She also traveled regularly to New York City for vocal and acting lessons. Swift later shifted her focus toward country music, inspired by Shania Twain's songs, which made her "want to just run around the block four times and daydream about everything". She spent weekends performing at local festivals and events. After watching a documentary about Faith Hill, Swift felt she needed to move to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in music. She traveled there with her mother at age eleven to visit record labels and submitted demo tapes of Dolly Parton and Dixie Chicks karaoke covers. She was rejected, however, because "everyone in that town wanted to do what I wanted to do. So, I kept thinking to myself, I need to figure out a way to be different."
In 2003, Swift and her parents started working with New York based talent manager Dan Dymtrow. With his help, Swift modeled for Abercrombie & Fitch as part of their "Rising Stars" campaign, had an original song included on a Maybelline compilation CD, and met with major record labels. After performing original songs at an RCA Records showcase, Swift, then 13 years old, was given an artist development deal and began making frequent trips to Nashville with her mother. To help Swift break into the country music scene, her father transferred to Merrill Lynch's Nashville office when she was 14 years old, and the family relocated to Hendersonville, Tennessee. Swift attended Hendersonville High School before transferring to Aaron Academy after two years, which better accommodated her touring schedule through homeschooling. She graduated one year early.
In Nashville, Swift worked with experienced Music Row songwriters such as Troy Verges, Brett Beavers, Brett James, Mac McAnally, and the Warren Brothers and formed a lasting working relationship with Liz Rose. They began meeting for two-hour writing sessions every Tuesday afternoon after school. Rose called the sessions "some of the easiest I've ever done. Basically, I was just her editor. She'd write about what happened in school that day. She had such a clear vision of what she was trying to say. And she'd come in with the most incredible hooks." Swift became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house, but left then BMG-owned RCA Records (later bought by Sony Music) at the age of 14 due to the label's lack of care and them "cut[ting] other people's stuff". She was also concerned that development deals can shelve artists and recalled: "I genuinely felt that I was running out of time. I wanted to capture these years of my life on an album while they still represented what I was going through."